Could we not nerf Zealot more?

[Valaska]

So the flamer got hit VERY hard. I get if they don’t want it killing armour, but they also cut the ammo down DRASTICALLY which hampers its horde clearing ability, even further making Zealot nothing but a weaker Veteran that can’t do melee or shooting nearly as well as Veteran can.

Why cut down on the ammo too? Why such a massive move on a weapon that was fairly balanced as well. WHy not do just the damage nerf, and leave the ammo and decide if you took it too far before completely making the weapon trash?

Playing around with it some more.

There is now not enough fuel to clear most malice level hordes, so you cut its ability to do anything basically. It is now a trash weapon, and on top of that the chainswords got nerfed too? The only good unique melee weapon zealots had… why? To try and bring them in line with other bad weapons instead of raising up other bad weapons to be workable?

If a Zealot is taking a flamer it means they have ZERO utility in long range. They are giving up a MASSIVE portion of this game, most gunners are now untouchable and snipers can destroy you with zero ability to respond. The flamer SHOULD be a powerful weapon for how much you need to rely on team members now. This just pulls the Zealot down even further and it is already the worst class (Despite being my favourite to play) of the four. And why?

Even the power sword nerfs make little sense, and I am sort of annoyed at how the Veteran is a better melee class than the Zealot. But i didn’t want Veteran to be nerfed to try and bring it more in line with Zealot, Fatshark, you should be BUFFING Zealot to the level of Veteran. The power sword is insanely good, but it is ADEQUATE for Damnation and it still can still fail to do the job it needs to do in Heresy, so what are these nerfs doing? If you want more weapon variety, do it like Warframe and buff ALL THE BAD WEAPONS into the same bracket as the good weapons.

Like, I might be an indie game developer but I have zero idea why zealot is being hit with multiple massive nerfs at the same time. Especially when the flamer nerf is supposed to be aimed at its ability to deal with armour. Yet its entire ammo capacity is cut down, too? Why would you do that, you should INCREMENTALLY nerf something if you are going to go that route but you hit it on two stats at the same time to deal with one problem, the one stat being NECESSARY for its primary purpose, Horde clearing. Even if you upped the damage, you have still massively harmed its ability to do its job by cutting down on its capacity which was already pretty low… especially when the zealot who takes a flamer has ZERO long range ability.

I have no idea why these nerfs are so drastic when this is a PVE Coop game… and neither the chainsword or the flamer were game breaking in any sense, especially in Heresy and up.

[Ralendil]

If you play a zealot, you should rely on melee weapon… not a flamer.
They did not nerf the class, they nerfed the weapon that was OP.

When I use the flamer, it is just to clean an horde and give a breath to my team. But, a ranged weapon should not be your favorite choice, except for the final of any missions (when you wait for extraction).

[Valaska]

The flamer was HARDLY OP. You can’t touch snipers with it, most the time gunners are out of range with it, you are completely hampered on reaching out too far and it took a CONCERTED effort to take down Crushers or Bulwarks. Did it get rid of Maulers and Ragers pretty quick? Sure, but it’s a horde-clearing weapon it was doing what it was supposed to.

It already had a ton of anchors on it holding it back from being overpowered. In Heresy absolutely it was held back… in damnation!? Multiple lasguns, pistols, and autoguns were a better option than the flamer. This nerf completely destroys its primary function by cutting down on both reserve and magazine.

[alsozara]

@Valaska

and on top of that the chainswords got nerfed too?

Huh? Their rev attacks were made more consistent for their intended purpose. How were they nerfed? Did I miss a patch note?

[Ralendil]

Then why lot of people asked for a nerf… including zealot players (like me)?
Check the discord channel and you will see that the players were agree. Check current forum and you will find several threads about it.

Also… I will say it again.
They did not nerf the zealot, cause this is a melee class. They nerfed one weapon.

[Valaska]

Why would I care about the discord. Go look over to the steam discussion, if Fatshark is getting its tips from the discord and your tips are “Nerf everythign so you are FORCED to use Agripinaa Braced and Combat axe/knife” then they need to either ban you or close the discord and hire on people from other PVE games that have been successful for balance tips.

You don’t completely DESTROY weapons and classes to bring them “in line” with others in a PVE game. You want to promote as much variety and fun as possible, and Zealots ALREADY were better using both the Auto Shredder Pistol, Agripinaa, and Kantreal. That was VASTLY BETTER than the Flamer, and now the flamer is complete garbage with zero purpose, a complete hindrance with no benefit to using it.

The Thunder Hammer is already garbage, and they are hitting the chains weapons now too, so now the Zealot is relegated to the Veteran meta weapons of Agripinaa Braced, Kantreal, and Combat Axe. If you want to kill a class and drive players away, nerf already barely viable weapons like the flamer where people manage to use them in certain niches or have fun with them. The flamer WAS garbage compared to the Agripinaa, and it is complete trash compared to it now.

The flamer COULD be amazing in the right situation and it could save entire runs int he final mission. But everywhere else? Snipers, gunners. That’s all it took to make the flamer completely unworkable, and it already suffered from low ammo… instead of making it just hit armour less they NERFED ITS ALREADY LOW CAPACITY and even took a hit to its reserve???

Completely ridiculous, it’s not how you should be balancing an PVE Coop game period. Every PVE game that ends up chasing nerfs instad of buffing other weapons and classes to be in line with the other top tier stuff end up driving players away as they enforce a few STRICT and stringent meta options, destroying variety. It happened with MWO, it happened in SWG, it has happned in dozens of PVE centric games and its going to happen to darktide too especially if the community that they are actually listening to are calling for nerfs instead of bringing other weapons in line… and improving or making the enemies/AI match the player expectation and gear.

This nearly killed Warframe at one point when they nerfed almost every weapon in the game people enjoyed using… the solution was to buff them QUICKLY (Within 2 months as they lost over a third of their players according to Digital Extremes) and they improved the lethality of the enemies (Grineer specifically) instead.

ALSO. Balancing for Malice and not considering Heresy or Damnation is a REALLY dumb thing to do when those are the only thing that could be considered an “end game” for Darktide. SO yeah the Flamer nerf is pretty terrible, and just a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb decision.

[alsozara]

@Valaska

Go look over to the steam discussion

Steam forums are reliably a cesspool frankly so I’ll pass on any takes found there. I’ve certainly seen pretty widespread sentiment among Damnation players that flamer was overtuned, I can’t guess what % of players but I don’t think you help your case by acting like that opinion doesn’t exist. I do actually think they’ve probably over nerfed it looking at the notes but I think we can maybe spend a little more time with the changes before crying bloody murder.

Also could you respond to this please? I’m genuinely very confused by what you’re referring to here.

@alsozara

@Valaska

and on top of that the chainswords got nerfed too?

Huh? Their rev attacks were made more consistent for their intended purpose. How were they nerfed? Did I miss a patch note?

[Bankrotas]

Ahh it’ll be fine. It still retains horde and boss killing potential while also dipping into unofficial synergy with the ult.

And, if you think this is balancing around Malice, maybe it’s a “you” problem, rather than “everyone else’s”.

[Valaska]

Have you even ever tried damnation or heresy? The flamethrower was okay in Heresy, you could get the job don but you have to end up hiding, staying back, and relying on team mates to take out the ranged things before you can even THINK of moving forward. You basically stayed behind and cleared up things attacking the long ranged guys. A pretty awesome role for Zealot, one of the few roles it was good at.

Take it into Damnation and you are fricken sweating trying to get the flamer to work. It was fun to do it, it was okay at staggering so other people could kill armoured enemies… but that’s all it was good for it did virtually NOTHING in damnation. And instead of buffing other worse weapons to be good they nerfed a unique weapon which a lot of players enjoyed using because its different and fun. Now the PYSKER HAS A BETTER FLAMETHROWER BY FAR.

[Valaska]

The steam forums are full of your mass players, the kind of people who are the BULK OF YOUR PLAYERS. Who joins Fatshark’s discord, or comes on here typically? The smaller portion of your most dedicated fans.

Sounds like a good group to listen to th- WRONG. They are your SMALLEST POPULATION. When your mass audience population collapses, like it kind of did already, then you are going to end up with a game that slowly dies as even the core dedicated audience will be driven away by tiny population numbers… or the game won’t generate enough money for the company to warrant continued development on.

Maybe it’s my game developer brain kicking in. But driving away people from using the tools and mechanics they find enjoyable, like the flamer, power sword, chainsword, and other things… instead of buffing the variety of weapons and making the higher difficulties have better more responsive AI and unique aspects that increase the complexity… is a bad idea fo the longevity of your project.

It’s low how Tarkov listened to no one bust streamers and TANKED its population to the point its almost no one but streamers playing it and the streamers constantly complain about low populations and no one can figure out why. The difference is… Darktide does not have a captive audience. It is not the first to market, either. It is in a genre that is fairly robust and has a lot of options it needs to compete with.

Which is why driving people away with nerfs and ruining variety/fun that is available, is an INCREDIBLY BAD IDEA.t

[Flawless]

@Ralendil

Then why lot of people asked for a nerf… including zealot players (like me)?
Check the discord channel and you will see that the players were agree. Check current forum and you will find several threads about it.

Also… I will say it again.
They did not nerf the zealot, cause this is a melee class. They nerfed one weapon.

Yeah…
Imo the flamer should not have been introduced to zealots in the first place.
The zealot is a great melee class and has amazing mobility and controlling power.

So many zealot players just use(d) the flamer for everything and turned the zealot into a ranged class that forces psykers and veterans to the frontline (where they can’t even see anything).

I hope that this nerf causes more zealot players to use a larger variety of weapons.

No idea why they hit us with a blanket nerf (50% dmg reduction against flak) for ALL sources of fire dot though.
This includes gun blessings as well as sources of Soulblaze on psyker.

[Ralendil]

@Valaska

You don’t completely DESTROY weapons and classes to bring them “in line” with others in a PVE game.

Where did they destroy the class? You can use your combat axe, a tactical axe, an heavy sword, a thunder hammer, a crusher or even a combat blade…
I don’t see your point. The zealot is melee focused.
I have one slot with a good flamer on my zealot. But actually I use combat axe / kantrael shotgun. I like also Combat axe / lawbringer shotgun. But i have other slot like that: Heavy sword / bolter | shredder autopistol / crucis hammer | flamer / combat axe | colomnus braced autogun / tactical axe

@Valaska

The Thunder Hammer is already garbage, and they are hitting the chains weapons now too, so now the Zealot is relegated to the Veteran meta weapons of Agripinaa Braced, Kantreal, and Combat Axe. If you want to kill a class and drive players away, nerf already barely viable weapons like the flamer where people manage to use them in certain niches or have fun with them. The flamer WAS garbage compared to the Agripinaa, and it is complete trash compared to it now.

Why you quote braced agri and MG XII here?
You know there are plenty options… Shotguns, revolver (a little weak at damnation difficulty but fine under that), bolter (a little OP in my opinion), shredder autopistol, infantry autogun (powerful from what I ve seen from several players using it in damnation)…
But again, that is ranged weapons.

Combat axe is one of the easy option in melee. But you can use heavy sword that is great with some training, tactical axe that has strong points (rapidity and versatility). About hammer, i have one, I have difficulties with this weapon but… It is powerful.
There’s a video on youtube of someone doing damnation in solo with a crucis hammer and shredder autopistol.

@Valaska

The flamer COULD be amazing in the right situation and it could save entire runs int he final mission. But everywhere else? Snipers, gunners. That’s all it took to make the flamer completely unworkable, and it already suffered from low ammo… instead of making it just hit armour less they NERFED ITS ALREADY LOW CAPACITY and even took a hit to its reserve???

Actually it seems you rely too much on it.
I will test it this evening and will come back to this thread. Tbh i did not want to use it until a nerf cause it is too powerful and it was annoying seeing people using flamer for anything…
I was not in favor of an ammo nerf (what i called a fuel canister nerf) cause I fear that several will want to pick more ammo…
If you want to be a good zealot, you should run with a melee weapon in your hands and always think how to kill enemies with it… The ranged weapon should be the exception.
If you do that, you won’t impact ammo supply of the team and you will give breathe for the team (especially psykers but also veterans).

[Gebel]

it was too strong and trivialized the game. Range argument is nonsense, it could reach most gunners unless they were REALLY far away which was rare. Only weakness was snipers. It melted reapers, crushers and anything else in a few seconds while having unlimited ammo, it made game unfun to other players as if you had a flamer you could just go afk since it cleared everything.

Every high end player hated it since it trivialized the game so much. Literally 80% of zealots ran it in pugs, wonder why if it was so weak lmao. I’m really glad there won’t be anymore unskilled flamer zealots spamming it in my games. Based nerfs

[weeping.moon]

@Valaska

Have you even ever tried damnation or heresy? The flamethrower was okay in Heresy, you could get the job don but you have to end up hiding, staying back, and relying on team mates to take out the ranged things before you can even THINK of moving forward. You basically stayed behind and cleared up things attacking the long ranged guys. A pretty awesome role for Zealot, one of the few roles it was good at.

The reason i don’t like such statements, noone knows what are your flamer stats, what is your build overall and how good you are at the game.

[Valaska]

…? 76, 53, 70, 76, 75, SHowstopper 3, blaze away 4. It’s pretty damn good.

I can clear Damnation as Vet and Psyker reliably and pretty easily.

[Ralendil]

You can yet now.
But flamer should not be your main weapon… Your main tool is the melee weapon as zealot

[Darth_Angeal]

@Valaska

but they also cut the ammo down DRASTICALLY

@Valaska

There is now not enough fuel to clear most malice level hordes, so you cut its ability to do anything basically.

I highly doubt that it´ll have the impact you actually claim. All you´ve to do is to stop holding LMB after a couple of seconds and let the DoT do its job. Just swap to melee, block and watch everything burn down so…

@Valaska

even further making Zealot nothing but a weaker Veteran that can’t do melee or shooting nearly as well as Veteran can.

Funny thing to claim that Zealot is weaker in melee, because a broken range-weapon got finally nerfed.
Since PS got nerfed aswell, even if time will show how hard the impact is, then Zealot is obviously the best choice for melee-combat, no matter which weapon you pick.
And that the range-orientated class is better on range should be obvious. Vet could still use some lighter nerfs at some feats, but your claim is nonsense.

@Valaska

I have no idea why these nerfs are so drastic when this is a PVE Coop game

Every game needs balance, no matter if you like it or not. Having too much broken or useless stuff will kill any game pretty fast. It´s just no fun in long terms or for those who wants to engage with the gameplay, which is not possible if a guy holding LMB kills everything in 3s.

I´ll personally never get this “but it´s a PvE game” attitude as much as the “lore please” anyway. Having 100 weapons but 10 outshine others by miles is just nonsense.

@Valaska

The flamer was HARDLY OP. You can’t touch snipers with it, most the time gunners are out of range with it, you are completely hampered on reaching out too far and it took a CONCERTED effort to take down Crushers or Bulwarks.

This claim shows a lot of inexperience on your class and since you pretty much rampage caused by a flamer nerf, i know where you´re coming from…

@Valaska

Did it get rid of Maulers and Ragers pretty quick? Sure, but it’s a horde-clearing weapon it was doing what it was supposed to.

Horde =/= elites.

@Valaska

It already had a ton of anchors on it holding it back from being overpowered.

Just compare it to the purgatus-staff, which is pretty much the same.

• Flamer had pretty much x3 the damage.
• Flamer has double-range.
• Flamer doesn´t eat peril and ammunition was never an issue.

Meanwhile the purge… it has endless ammunition as long as you deal with peril.

The current peril-management is not really a thing and overbuffed, but the flamer-nerf is justified.
Will poeple jump on Agrippina now? Maybe… but that´s the next weapon needing a little nerf together with Bolter.

@Flawless

No idea why they hit us with a blanket nerf (50% dmg reduction against flak) for ALL sources of fire dot though.
This includes gun blessings as well as sources of Soulblaze on psyker.

I´m pretty sure it´s because they want such stuff to be there for hordeclear in the first case and it´s a good step bring some elites into a better spot.

Just look at Psyker aswell… staves are spammable with the easy peril-management now and the soulblaze-feats got tweaked to shine better on forceswords with the soulblaze-perks.

[Valaska]

Where did they destroy the class? You can use your combat axe, a tactical axe, an heavy sword, a thunder hammer, a crusher or even a combat blade…

So you think that it’s a good idea they force people to use the same 3 weapons. Yay, I am stuck with Combat Axe, Combat blade… that’s about it because everything else is crap in comparison above Malice. The thunder hammers are COMPLETE GARBAGE with their charge up hurling you back. The maul is at least good at knocking things over though. So it has a bit of a place to just keep things grounded for awhile. Pretty dumb though when you could you know, just take an axe and kill things instead of knocking them over waiting for others to do it for you.

You know there are plenty options… Shotguns, revolver (a little weak at damnation difficulty but fine under that), bolter (a little OP in my opinion), shredder autopistol, infantry autogun (powerful from what I ve seen from several players using it in damnation)…

Oh good more nerfs to ruin variety, yeah lets just limit the bolter to 20 rounds a mag and cut its reserve down by 25%, might as well make everything with armour resist it too. Why not, that’s more or less what they did to the flamer. We all know the way you introduce fun and variety is to nerf weapons into the fricken ground! That really goes well in PVE coop games.

The shotguns are lame, they feel trash to use and they aren’t that great. Dragons breath is kinda good but in general they weirdly fall off in horde clearing which you think a shotgun would be great at. The Shredder and Agripinaa braced are already meta weapons, so yeah I guess just stick to one of the 3 most meta weapons. You know, because that means people can choose their playstyle and have fun. “Welcome to darktide! We have like, 40 guns. Here’s the 3 that work! Hope you like them!”

Again, you are going “Oh what about the combat axe!” Okay, what about the chainsword? What about the catachan sword? What about the bully club? Why should they be completely trash weapons instead of buffing ALL WEAPONS to be in line with the better tiers so people can choose what they use based on what they find the most fun? Sounds smart.

And yeah, the shredder is one of the 3 top meta guns. Ok.

Actually it seems you rely too much on it.

My main class is Veteran. Even then, when I run damnation on Zealot I will drop the flamer because it was trash compared to the Agripinaa or Kantreal or auto shredder. Now I am FORCED to take one of those 3 because everything else is just crap in comparison so there goes a playstyle i personally found neat and fun. Satisfying, even. Guess I could go bolter but again I’ll just play Veteran if I am going bolter.

So hey, neat, at least the Zealot can press objective button as it is made more and more irrelevant compared to the Veteran and Psyker. Now that Purge staff is vastly superior to the flamethrower lol. With zero of the ammo issues, wider spread, and the psyker gets bursts to deal with gunners and snipers lol.

[Flawless]

@Darth_Angeal

I´m pretty sure it´s because they want such stuff to be there for hordeclear in the first case and it´s a good step bring some elites into a better spot.

Gun blessings that apply a low number of burn stacks on crit, are 100% not there for horde clear.

Also, this nerf has the biggest effect on any source of burn, that can not easily be stacked to max.
The zealot flamer happens to be the one tool that allows to stack burn dots much easier than anything else in the game. You just hold down the button and wait for things to die.

All other sources of burn DoT either require crit and a blessing, or are otherwise limited in how fast the DoT can be stacked up.

[Ralendil]

@Flawless

No idea why they hit us with a blanket nerf (50% dmg reduction against flak) for ALL sources of fire dot though.
This includes gun blessings as well as sources of Soulblaze on psyker.

This will make the surge staff shines more…